On Thursday, 140 congressmen and 51 senators sent letters to the White House on behalf of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the US Congress in which they demanded that President George W. Bush should seek annulment of the new import quotas of American meat and poultry which had been introduced by the Russian government. The congressmen and senators wrote that to solve the given problem they were ready to support any appropriate steps by the White House with regard to Russia, even retaliatory measures. In other words, they were ready to support, if need be, Washington's favourite "arms-twisting" tactics.

Citing the legislators' letters, the spokesman for the White House's press service told the NBC television company that the George W. Bush administration reacted seriously to this problem and at the present time was working over its solution with the Russian side.

More than 5.8 million people voted for Nicholas Maduro at the presidential election in Venezuela. This is more than a quarter of registered voters. Why did those people vote for the man, who, as Western media write, took Venezuela to the brink of collapse?